Our Idiot Brother (2011)

Our Idiot Brother Synopsis

Every family has one: the sibling who is always just a little bit behind the curve when it comes to getting his life together. For sisters Liz (Emily Mortimer), Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), that person is their perennially upbeat brother Ned (Paul Rudd), an erstwhile organic farmer whose willingness to rely on the honesty of mankind is a less-than-optimum strategy for a tidy, trouble-free existence. Ned may be utterly lacking in common sense, but he is their brother and so, after his girlfriend dumps him and boots him off the farm, his sisters once again come to his rescue. As Liz, Emily and Natalie each take a turn at housing Ned, their brother's unfailing commitment to honesty creates more than a few messes in their comfortable routines. But as each of their lives begins to unravel, Nedís family comes to realize that maybe, in believing and trusting the people around him, Ned isnít such an idiot after all.

Three of the worst movies of the summer were foisted onto movie-going audiences this weekend and, in good turn, all three made only tiny splashes at the box office. None of the newcomers could top last week's number one film, The Help. The summer underdog has slowly been building in popularity over the last few weeks and is set to cross the $100 million threshold this week.

As for the banned commercial thing, this seems more like a Weinstein Company publicity stunt than any kind of free speech issue, though it's always annoying to see the major networks constantly living in fear of the angry people who will call them and say they're bringing down society's morals

Earlier this year I was given the opportunity to visit Pixar Studios in Emeryville, California. While there, another journalist and I were invited to sit down with Emily Mortimer to talk about her role in Cars 2, a film in which she voiced a purple Jaguar XJR-15 who works as a spy. Just a couple weeks ago I had the chance to sit down with the actress again, though this time I talked with her about being playing a fake hippie Brooklyn mother in Our Idiot Brother.

The Rotten Watch is coming at you live from a remote vacation spot deep on the beach watching the sun rising over the ocean while I dream of an air conditioned movie theater with digital surround sound, dimmed lights and gum sticking to my shoes. Canít wait for this vacation to be over so I can get back to an insular existence. This week, the summer movie starts its slow decent into oblivion with a hitlady, a horror and an idiot

He's obviously in some version of his titular idiot character from the movie, but some part of me wants to believe Rudd is this cheerful, and slightly clueless, in real life. At least we have no trouble that Harvey Weinstein is actually this cranky

One thing that makes Paul Rudd so much fun to watch is that he has the ability to play both the straight man and the funny man from project to project. He has the capacity to go from playing pot-smoking surf teacher Kunu/Chuck in Forgetting Sarah Marshall to straight-laced Peter Klaven in I Love You, Man and have nobody in the audience see a problem with it (on that note, Jason Segel is pretty talented in that department as well).

In the film Paul Rudd plays a harmless, lovable, stoner whose insistence on kindness, honesty, and thinking the best of everyone lands him in jail for possession. He gets out and ends up going to live with his sisters, all of whom are endlessly frustrated by his kindhearted ways.

Moviefone has posted the first poster for the film and while it's a fairly simple design, it's quite effective. A pointillist design, the one-sheet looks like it could have been torn out of the back pages of an old comic book, and there, in the middle of a yellow stamp, is our wonderfully idiotic protagonist. I can't wait until this movie finally arrives on August 26.

The supporting cast is undeniable-- Rashida Jones, Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks, Kathryn Hahn and Hugh Dancy all find their way in there-- but the reason we're all dying to see it, of course, is Paul Rudd, with his mane of matted hair and terrible tank tops and all

That date, a little over a year after the move started filming, is obviously more logical, but the first week in January spot is also a kiss of death, pretty much the closest you can get to a guarantee that a movie will be terrible. Not that anyone had particularly high expectations for Apollo 18